1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a machine for peeling fruits or vegetables which is particularly suitable for peeling citrus fruits such as grapefruit, orange, summer or bitter orange or the like.
2. Description of Prior Art
There have been proposed various peeling machines for automatically stripping outer skins of not only citrus fruits but also various other fruits and vegetables. The conventional peeling machines ordinarily employs a rotary clamp mechanism to rotate a fruit or vegetable while holding its opposite ends between clamp members and while contacting the fruit or vegetable with a cutting blade which is fixed relative to the surface of the fruit or vegetable.
Peeling machines of this sort have no problem with relatively hard fruits like apples which can be peeled easily, but have difficulties in cutting off skins with relatively soft tissues, for example, the white cotton-like layers under the yellow outer skins of citrus fruits such as grapefruit, orange and bitter orange. It is often the case that the fruit juice is squeezed out and scattered as the soft tissues are compressed without being cut off sharply by the cutting blade. Accordingly, the conventional peeling machines are limited to particular kinds of fruits or vegetables.
In the following description and appended claims, the term "fruit" comprehends soft and stone fruist and fruit-like vegetables which have edible flesh under a skin.